So you’re thinking about being a designer? If I could tell you only *one thing* about going into the field, my advice would be ________.

I thought of a lot of different answers, many of them quite cynical. I imagine my time watching the industry’s discussions and throwing peanuts at it from OK/Cancel makes me think that way a lot. For example, I considered answering with, “don’t use convoluted phrases just to make yourself sound smarter.” In the end, I erred on the side of practicality:

The other answers have been collected on the School of Visual Arts blog.

Ever since Virgin America launched, I’ve been eagerly waiting for the opportunity to fly with them. I’m a frequent traveler and while living in London, was exposed to a lot of Richard Branson and Virgin’s antics and marketing. They’re a fun company with a lot of character and personality. They’re irreverent, they buck trends, providing quality where none used to be expected.

Today, a simple error has caused us a lot of pain and cost VA a lot of good will.

It all started last week when Coley was booking flights for us for a trip we’re taking to LA. She went to virginamerica.com, looked up appropriate times, and booked the flights. However, when she was done, neither of us received a confirmation e-mail even though she’d entered both of our email addresses.

Two days later, we still hadn’t received any confirmation emails. We checked our spam folders to no avail. Coley logged into her VA account and the website said “no pending flights”. No charges had been made to the credit card, either.

As it was two weeks from when we needed to fly we needed to get tickets soon. We assumed the booking hadn’t completed and proceeded to book another set of flights. However, the original itinerary was no longer available as they were booked so we booked slightly different times to fly (but kept the same days).

Another two days pass, and we discover that Virgin America has charged us for both sets of flights. “No big deal,” we thought, “we didn’t receive any confirmations at all and the flight still doesn’t show up on the website. We’ll just call them up and they’ll fix it.”

As you might have guessed, it turns out that even Virgin America with all its irreverance and snarky humour has a Big Corporation side. Coley was on the customer service line for 2 hours, during which time she was subjected to two disconnections and multiple attempts to charge us $150 cancellation fee — again for a flight which we didn’t even know existed.

After the first 2 hours, Coley finally got through to a manager, David, who was reasonable but unable to give us a refund on the flight. Instead, he offered to waive the $150 but the ticket cost would have to stay as airline credit. We reminded him that they were keeping our money for a website error but after an additional hour of back and forth, it was clear he wasn’t empowered to do much else.

His proposed solution? Use the “contact us” link on the website—the website that broke and charged us $300 without telling us we had any flights booked.

This episode shows how a business must invest in more than just its core service. Virgin America may have created a stellar flying experience that outclasses most but that doesn’t mean they can compromise in their online experience and their customer service.

The most frustrating part of this entire episode is how it feels like we’ve been blamed and then penalized for an error on their part. All the good will garnered through their savvy multi-million dollar marketing, fancy mood lighting and in-air WiFi was washed away because of one website error they wouldn’t take responsibility for.

Update 11:00AM 18 May 2009: @VirginAmerica responded to our Twitters. It probably helped that others also retweeted us (thanks!). I’ve given them my email address and we’ll see where it goes from here. I’ll be happy to have this resolved but it really shouldn’t have needed this much of a fuss in the first place.

Update 02:41PM 03 June 2009: @VirginAmerica told us we should expect a refund within a week of the last update but it didn’t come through. It turns out that this may have been due to our end because the credit card we booked with was lost and replaced in that time. They have been incredibly quick and responsive in their Twitter responses. Our friend @ang also ran into the same issue yesterday where she booked a flight but it didn’t show any confirmation, didn’t send her an email, didn’t show up on her Elevate account and didn’t show any charge on her credit card. She’s also been in touch with VA because she Twittered about the issue.

I’m really glad Virgin America is coming through so well with the social media tools and customer service but I really hope they fix that web issues that are plaguing them. I also sincerely hope the phone support staff will be empowered and educated on not putting the blame on the customer when the company’s technology fails. I’ll give a final update when we do sort this out but it looks like it’s under control.

Update 05:38PM 07 June 2009: The money has been refunded to our account! Hooray for Twitter and companies using social media!

The Music Festival features hundreds of bands across just about every genre. I thought figuring out which panels and parties to attend during the Interactive Festival was difficult but it pales in comparison to the musical selection — especially when they’re mostly up-and-comers. Thankfully, I was able to tag along with far more knowledgeable friends.

A quick summary of the shows I saw:

• Blitzen Trapper
• DEVO — going just to say you did is never a good thing
• The Asteroids Galaxy Tour — stumbled upon them because they played before The Little Ones and they’re great
• The Little Ones
• Nosaj Thing — great danceable set
• The Phenomenal Handclap Band
• Earlimart
• Anchorsong
• Camera Obscura
• The Bird and the Bee
• Janelle Monáe
• Arc Attack

By far the best show in terms of performance and showmanship though, was Janelle Monáe. Thankfully, Leonard managed to catch some great footage of that concert.

Arc Attack was awesome for just being awesome. They make music with Tesla coils!

Of course, I couldn’t go to every show and I heard about a number of acts that I wish I could have caught. Here are some of the artists I hope to check out both live and recorded:

• Department of Eagles
• M. Ward
• The Republic Tigers
• POS
• The Avett Brothers
• Telekinesis
• Thermals
• Alaska in Winter
• Thao Nguyen and the Get Down Stay Down

I lived in Austin, Texas from 1999-2003 and have attended SxSW Interactive every year since 2004. Each year, I attended SxSW each year with a different role:

• 2004: Tom Chi and I were nominated for the Web Awards for our design webcomic, OK/Cancel (we won but that was just gravy)
• 2005: Also on behalf of OK/Cancel, we attended as press
• 2006: I organized and spoke on a panel about learning to monetize blogs from webcomics and moderated a panel on the future of mapping
• 2007: I moderated a panel on mobile design
• 2008: Coley and I facilitated a Core Conversation about the implications of social media tools in relationships and dubbed it Breakups 2.0
• 2009: I have the privilege of helping out behind the scenes as a Panel Liaison.

This post isn’t about the best food in Austin (Rudy’s BBQ and Amy’s Ice Cream) or the best parties to attend. There are plenty of resources out there about those. Instead, you might consider this a beginner’s guide for how to get the most out of SxSW.

They’re Not Cliques

You’re at the conference, excited to meet all the people you’ve been reading online. You see them, gathered outside Room 18ABC in a circle chatting with each other and greeting their internet famous peers passing by.

Without fail, every person first timer at SxSWi has the same feedback: they have the sense that there’s an “in” crowd or that there are the “cool” kids and then there’s everyone else outside of that circle. I had the same impressions on my first trip.

What people don’t realize until they go a second or third time is that SxSWi is not just a conference — it’s a reunion. It’s the one time a year that I see some of my peers that live in cities or countries I don’t frequent. So there’s a lot of catching up with old friends that happens. Personally, I love meeting new and interesting people.

The lesson is to know that, for the most part, everyone is welcoming but you have to make the effort and break the ice. Recognize that few are being deliberately exclusionary.

Provide Context

On one of my earlier SxSW outings, I lamented about the “double handshake” where people shake your hand a second time when they recognize your work or who you are. The fact is, there are hundreds upon hundreds of people. I hate asking the question, “what do you do?” especially since it often is construed as “where do you work?” Instead, I try to understand who they are and what they care about. A friend of mine goes so far as to ask, “what are you passionate about?”

Conversations are a lot more memorable when you provide context of who you are and what projects you work on. Maybe it’s a blog about potato chips shaped like famous people. Maybe you’re a gal that draws on index cards. Maybe you are giving stickers to tag people. Whatever the case, giving some additional context goes a long way.

The first year I went, we had trading cards of famous HCI and usability practitioners dressed as superheroes. It was a fantastic icebreaker and helped people remember us or recognize that we were associated with a site they read.

Also, context doesn’t end with the introductions. We all collect dozens of business cards at conferences. Try to provide context there, too. I’ve found I remember the cards with photos more and some people leave room on their cards specifically to write in the context of your meeting.

It’s the Geek Spring Break. Be a Geek.

Use whatever the tools du jour are. Two years ago, it was Dodgeball. Last year, it was Twitter. This year, it will likely be a combination of Twitter, Brightkite and the newly launched Dodgeball replacement, foursquare. Get an unlimited SMS plan (even if it’s just for the month) and stay on the pulse.

I like to use the tech to be aware of what’s going on so I can bypass stupid lines, boring panels, or join a much smaller gathering where I’m guaranteed higher quality conversations.

Just remember what you’re using the tools for. They serve you, not the other way around. Being physically present at an awesome party means nothing if you’re mentally in your phone.

Fight the FOMO

This lesson was probably the hardest to learn. You can’t go to every panel and you can’t go to every party. Get over it now.

No, really. You can’t. Get over it.

Be willing to skip some panels if you’re having fascinating conversations in the hallway because you may not run into that person for the rest of the time there. Be willing to skip the big party that everyone’s talking to if there’s a great dinner group forming and you can talk one on one with some attendees without fighting the alcohol blur and the loud music. Be willing to skip everything to go to the Austin City Limits soundstage for a free show of a great band, or to go to Spider House Coffee and Toy Joy — just to enjoy Austin for what it is.

But just so you know what and how much there is to do:

• Tantek’s SxSW packing list
• Free SxSW Parties
• SxSW Baby Unofficial Blog
• Laughing Squid’s SxSW Resources
• SCHED.org scheduling tool
• Glenda’s introductory panel tomorrow on How to RAWK SxSW

I will be arriving Saturday, Mar 14 and staying through Music until Sun Mar 22. Find me on Twitter as @k if you want to meet up. While I have a published SxSW schedule, I fully expect to deviate completely from the plans. You should expect the same.

1. “Why would I want to know every little detail about what my friends are doing from Twitter/Facebook/Friendfeed?”
2. “How do you not get overwhelmed by all the people you follow/friend?”

My short answer is I don’t treat it like a fire hose I have to drink down, I treat it like a stream I dip my feet in every so often. To explain this statement, I need to first talk about friends and travel.

I was born in Vancouver, spent my formative years in Hong Kong and then returned to Vancouver for the last two years of high school and college before moving to Austin for my first job. All this moving was a mixed blessing. I was able to experience many different perspectives and made a wide range of friends from all over the world. On the other hand, there were few friends that shared my experiences throughout.

Whenever I visited Hong Kong, which is roughly annually, I meet up with my childhood friends. Conventional thinking would say that, because we haven’t seen each other for a year, we’d have a lot more to catch up on than say, someone here in San Francisco that I saw just the day before.

Anyone who has experience with this can tell you that it simply isn’t true. When you’re apart that long, conversation topics feel like they need to be a minimum level of significance to be worth discussing: career changes, marital status change, buying of property, perhaps a new family member, etc. A sample conversation might be like this:

Friend: “So how’ve you been?” Me: “Great. Things are going well. I got engaged!” Friend: “Congrats! You still doing that computer thing?” Me: “Yeah. Still at the same place. You still at the same firm?” Friend: “Yeah, 3 years now.” Me: “Wow …” Friend: “MmHmm …”

In contrast, the friends you see every day or every week are the ones you can talk to for hours. Why? Because any topic is fair game. You don’t feel like you have to filter out the more mundane topics because it’s such a significant event to be catching up with the person. How was that movie? Did you go climbing yesterday? Did you see that crazy YouTube video? No topic is too trivial.

So how is any of that relevant to the information overload of Twitter and Facebook?

To me, Twitter and Facebook updates represent the mundane, everyday conversations that I could and would have with everyone if I could. By seeing the stream of updates from my friends, I have much more context into their lives, and a feeling that I can converse with them about smaller things. To use a clichéd term, I feel more connected to them.

When I see these friends, even after many months apart, I still feel like I’ve been talking to them and keeping up with them to some extent. Conversations flow more naturally and are much more rooted in the present than trying to bridge the gap since we last interacted in person.

I disagree with the fire hose terminology because it’s not something that is pointed at me. It really is a stream of information which I can look at anytime I feel like. When I don’t dip my feet in, the stream flows on, I’ve missed some updates, and it doesn’t matter.

We can look at it a different way, too. Whether we know it or not, each of us probably have at least 300 people we know and like enough to want to keep in touch with. If you saw each of these people for dinner one friend a night, you would see each person once a year. One solution is to simply forget most of these and hang out with the same dozen friends week after week. Realistically, there are far more than a dozen interesting and inspiring people worth interacting with regularly.

So going back to the original two questions:

1. “Why would I want to know every little detail about what my friends are doing from Twitter/Facebook/Friendfeed? ” Using it helps me stay closer to more of my friends in a way that’s impossible to scale with in person interactions alone.
2. “How do you not get overwhelmed by all the people you follow/friend?” I don’t try to read everything.

Don’t drink from the hose. Dip your feet in the stream instead.

I’m not particularly active in the local Asian (North) American scene nor do I keep up much with local or national issues related to Asian Americans. But one pet peeve of mine has always been the role of Asians in Hollywood.

In the movie 21 based on the novel “Bringing Down the House” which, in turn, was based on a true story from MIT, the main character was converted from Asian to Caucasian. What was particularly irksome about this casting was that the story clearly states that most members of the blackjack team were minorities. In fact, they needed to be minorities because it was much more convincing for minorities to act like rich heirs playing their parents’ money at the high stakes tables.

The MIT team thrived by choosing BPs [Big Players] who fit the casino mold of the young, foolish, and wealthy. Primarily nonwhite, either Asian or Middle Eastern, these were the kids the casinos were accustomed to seeing bet a thousand bucks a hand.

I vented about that so much that my friend Ernie wrote about it on his group blog, 8 Asians.

Now, they can’t even seem to feel comfortable casting an Asian as a lead on a Japanese animation adaptation about martial arts.

In this regard, I am frequently disappointed about the role of Asians in North America and sometimes wonder if more needs to be done. More disturbing than the answer to questions like, “will we ever see an Asian play a lead role in a movie without having to play an Asian?”, “when will we see an Asian winning an Academy Award for Best Actor or Actress?” or “how long before an Asian President seems likely?” is how infrequently these questions ever seems to be asked.

Stupid, minor, seemingly inconsequential decisions like this casting serve to remind me how narrow minded mainstream Hollywood and its audience can still be — and make me wonder how far out I can extrapolate that generalization.